


Give Them What They Want

by damalur



Category: Doctor Who, Secret Diary of a Call Girl (TV)
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Porn Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-02
Updated: 2010-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-06 23:26:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damalur/pseuds/damalur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are neither of them butterflies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give Them What They Want

**Author's Note:**

> For [Porn Battle IX](http://oxoniensis.dreamwidth.org/25077.html?thread=2169077#cmt2169077). Put this down to the fact that I will ship any character played by David Tennant with any character played by Billie Piper. If you haven't seen _Secret Diary of a Call Girl_, what you really need to know is that Billie plays a call girl named Belle (a professional name; her real name is Hannah) who is neither traumatized nor coerced into her profession. Sometimes she takes off her clothes, which makes me have confused feelings. That is all.

The man—he gives his name as John Smith, but that's as obvious a pseudonym as _Belle_—the man asks for the strangest, gentlest things. He offers her a bundle of money, sits on her sofa with that long overcoat splayed around him, and asks to hold her hand.

"Of course," she says, and threads their fingers together. John Smith sighs and lets his head fall back; they sit like that for ten minutes before Belle lifts his hand and applies her tongue to the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.

"No!" He jerks. "No, sorry, just—don't do that."

"I'm sorry," she says. He slumps back again and eyes her arm, her wrist; the sight of her manicured nails seems to bother him, because he turns their hands over so her fingers curl to the underside. "Is it all right if I put my head on you shoulder?" she asks.

For a moment he flounders, mouth opening and closing, but he ultimately brightens to the idea. "Yes, I think I'd like that."

Belle curves into him and sets her cheek against his thin shoulder. They pass the rest of the hour in silence. Usually she'd be _twitching_ at the enforced stillness; intimacy is one thing, and being bored senseless is another, and this is something else entirely. It's serene.

At three on the mark he stands, gives her a lingering, full-body hug, and thanks her.

"It was my pleasure," Belle says, and the words trip oddly from her mouth.

\---

The shape of his great, dark eyes stays with her, and she takes him again as a client for that reason. He gives her the money—it's an exorbitant payment, even for a woman at the top of her game—sits on her couch, takes her hand. She settles lower on his chest this time, her ear pressed over his ribcage; there's an odd echo, like his heart is working double-time.

"Do you ever," he says, "not fix your hair?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Oh, I mean—do you ever wake up and sort of...comb it and then leave? It's lovely hair, didn't mean to imply otherwise. That was a bit rude, wasn't it?" His brow furrows.

"Little bit," Belle says, "but I don't mind." Hard not to smile at him, when his look of distress is so sincere.

He beams back at her, wide and generous, little crinkles creasing the corners of his eyes. _Find out what they want and give it to them_ is her rule; John Smith is a tough case, but that smile—

She wonders.

\---

She leaves her hair mostly alone for their third appointment; light on product, light on hairspray, heavy on the natural-and-straight look. For the first time he does more than simply sit with their fingers twined; he brushes over the back of her hand with his thumb, tracing veins and knuckles until the skin feels unbearably sensitive.

"You know," she says (purrs), twenty minutes in, "if you like, you can do more than just hold my hand."

"Yes. Ah," John Smith says. "That is, I am aware. They call it the oldest profession, don't they? Your job may be the one of the few things on this planet more ancient than I am."

The comment startles a laugh out of her, and her laughter in turn startles another of those glorious smiles out of him. There's something missing from his eyes, though, when he looks at her—

"Well," he continues, "I say _oldest_, but that's not true. Strictly."

"Not strictly true? You're only off by a few thousand years."

He looks at her, this odd assemblage of angles and hair clothed in the garb of an Eccentric, and Belle has the abrupt idea that he should be peering at her over the rim of eyeglasses.

"It doesn't bother you when I refer to your work, does it?" he asks. "That's interesting. Most humans have a stricter view about sexual activity." He reminds her of Ben, always trying to figure things out.

"Talked to a lot of aliens about sex, then?"

"Oh," John Smith says, "you'd be surprised."

\---

And then there is a day when instead of sitting on her couch, he strips down to his shirtsleeves and asks her to change. "Something bright, pink if you have it, nothing too..." He swallows and tucks his hands into his too-tight trouser pockets.

"I believe I have something to accommodate," she says, and lingers just inside the room. "There's a shower, if we're going to be doing anything—"

"Oh, no," John Smith says. "Nothing of the sort."

Right. He likes holding hands, touching her hair, talking to her about sexuality and aliens; God forbid she actually do what she's paid to do. Why she keeps asking him back, she isn't—but she is; _give them what they want_ is the rule, and only a handful of times has she failed to work out just that.

She re-enters the room wearing a bright pink slip from Hannah's wardrobe and no knickers. He's reclined on her couch again, sleeves rolled up and his tie loosened. With his coat and the top half of his suit absent, he looks positively _undone_.

"Hello," he says, and wiggles his fingers at her. "Clean hands, see?"

"Mmm, I do. Now. What would you like?"

He pats the seat beside him, and she accepts the invitation, tucking herself under the drape of his long arm. For one heartbeat, two, three, she waits; and then he moves, drawing her closer and setting his hand over her throat.

Fuck, isn't that a new sensation? Or at least so rare as to feel new; she's not much on asphyxiation, although one of her regulars is, but this touch is gentle—barely more than a caress.

He traces the line of her neck, thumb on one side and forefinger on the other, and then outlines the top of her shift. Belle, in the best tradition, lets lose with a throaty moan, but John Smith nips at her ear. "None of that, please."

So. He likes her to be silent—and he likes rubbing her off, too, because his hand keeps going down, down, a finger dipping briefly into her navel before he lifts her leg and props her foot on the sofa. And this, oh this he is very good at; he does nothing more than spread her open and set a finger between her lips. Only inadvertently does she let slip a noise, and she stifles that immediately.

"Good," he says. He starts to move just that middle finger, stroking from just above her arsehole to just shy of her clit, long, languid strokes that soon have her wanting to keen for more. When he finally does set the tip of her finger where she wants it, her climax is localized and intense and leaves her feeling lazy. Catlike, almost; she wants to press against his warmth and doze. He lets her do just that, petting the join of her thighs.

Finally he shifts. "Need to go wash my hands again," he says, "clean hygiene and all that"—so she lets him up and takes the opportunity to put herself in order. He comes back wiping his hands dry on the front of his shirt, and she watches bemusedly as he collects his coats.

"Thank you," he says, and then startles her by adding, "Hannah Baxter."

"How do you...?"

"I am amazingly, astoundingly observant," he says, and she suspects that's meant to impress her. "You're rather observant yourself, though, aren't you. Hannah Baxter."

"Thanks," she says. She feels _pinned_ under his gaze; it brings to mind the butterfly that she and her sister found so many years ago. One of its wings was caught under a rock, the poor thing painfully and beautifully exposed.

"Come with me," he says.

"I'm...sorry, pardon?"

"Come with me," he says. "Traveling. We could travel together, see the stars. We would be brilliant, Hannah Baxter, you and I."

"I'm not sure what you—"

"No, never mind. Sorry. I don't know why I said that."

_I think I do_, she doesn't say. "Good night, then. I suppose I'll see you again?"

"No," he says. He speaks with weight; she isn't sure how he manages it, this young-old man who is not precisely like anyone she has ever met before. "No, I don't think you will."

And he leaves.

She counts her money again, tucks it away, and remembers the expression on his face.

She wonders if she isn't the butterfly.

She wonders if he is.


End file.
